


adults

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Glitter, Insomnia, Jedi Archaeology, Languages, Mentors, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Neighbors, Post-Battle of Endor, Sibling Love, That Boulder from Indiana Jones, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Yavin 4, bad roommates, holocrons, there goes the neighbourhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 17:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14835819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Luke and Leia, at twenty-three, are trying to rebuild galactic democracy and the Jedi Order.It could be going better.





	adults

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stitchingatthecircuitboard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/gifts).



Leia hasn’t had a regular sleep cycle since she was about sixteen. Her mother isn’t here to despair over it any more, Luke wouldn’t know where to start, and Han solves the problem when she gets too sleep-deprived by tempting her onto something soft and horizontal and asking her to tell him about her day until she gets stuck in the minutiae of constitutional law and they both fall asleep. Luke has a lot of holos of the two of them sleeping like that all across the galaxy.

 

The baby doesn’t seem to help much, even though it’s only three months in the womb. She’s more restless than ever, not because she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but because she’s full of too much purpose.

 

She really needs to check with Shara if this is normal.

 

Occasionally, Leia finds it difficult to remember why other people sleep, but after forceful representations by Chewbacca that involved a lot of wailing and what she’s fairly sure was a recommendation for a good gynaecologist - and where in all the nine Force-frozen hells did Chewie find a _gynaecologist_? - she has at least learned to keep the noise down in the _Falcon_ ’s galley. So she’s quiet enough to hear an intruder’s light tread and draw a blaster from a cupboard that theoretically holds tea-towels, and wakeful enough to recognise and relax in her twin’s presence as he lets it flash unshielded for a few seconds. There was never any real danger: they’re parked in a large field that will one day be a house, maybe, if they can ever afford it or the New Senate gets around to disbursing their back pay, and old Mister Dameron is enough like his daughter-in-law to come belting out with a Clone Wars-era blaster and a bad attitude if anyone comes near his neighbours. But Leia’s wartime habits show no sign of fading away.

 

She doesn’t insult Luke by putting the blaster away, but she does put the caf pot on. Its whistling covers her near-hysterical laughter when she sees him. He’s totally covered in caked-on mud, a healthy dusting of cobwebs, and (for some reason) glitter.

 

Chewie’s going to yell when he sees the state of the floor.

 

“What the kriff happened to _you_?” she says, and only afterwards remembers to add “Welcome home.”

 

Luke grins, and sets down his knapsack very carefully. “Most recently? Some of the Ester kids were casting a fake spell and I took a shortcut through their paddock at the _wrong_ moment. My speeder looks dazzling.”

 

Leia bites down on a knuckle to stop herself going off again. “Spells need glitter?”

 

“ _Fake_ spells,” Luke says reproachfully. “And I got a real holocron out of that old temple, so it was worth it.”

 

“Is that where the mud came from?” Leia goes into a smuggling compartment just outside the galley and retrieves a tarp, which is usually used for things that are less grubby and more fun than removing muddy clothes, but it’ll do the job.  


“The way in, yeah.” Luke stands on the tarp and strips down to a t-shirt and shorts, washes his hands and face at the sink. The hair can wait for later. It’ll have to, unless he wants to take a bucket outside, because the fresher’s sonics make a noise that reverberates through Han and Leia’s cabin.

 

Leia’s heard the _Falcon_ was a classy ship before Han got hold of her, but she heard that from Lando, and therefore doesn’t believe a word of it.

 

“What about the cobwebs?”  


“That was once I got past the muddy bit. Before it had all dried.” Luke flicks regretfully at a bit that is still stuck to his neck. “Then there was some kind of weird prove-my-worth thing, and I had to move a massive rock rolling towards me with the Force, which I think was a test but was actually just kind of necessary, and then there was a ghost of guardians past who did not speak Basic. Or Huttese. Or Alderaanian. Or Sthira.”

 

Luke speaks only Basic and Huttese fluently, Leia knows. She taught him all the Alderaanian he knows, and he learned Sthira from his aunt, who learned it from Luke’s grandmother; he spoke it natively but never perfectly, and he hasn’t had a chance to speak it since Tatooine. It seems a long shot, a slave tongue from a small Outer Rim planet; Luke must have been very desperate. Or seriously annoyed.

 

No wonder he’s been gone since dawn, if he’s spent the entire time crawling through muddy tunnels and arguing with ghosts. Leia’s connection with him can cope with much more than a hundred klicks’ distance if they really try, so she wasn’t worried, but since the sun set she had been vaguely considering borrowing Shara’s speeder and going after him.

 

“How did you get through?” Leia asks.

 

“I threw my hands up, dropped my lightsaber, and yelled WILL YOU PLEASE JUST FUCKING HELP ME OUT HERE.”

 

Leia nearly suffocates trying to giggle and shush him at the same time.

 

“What does it even do? The holocron?”  


“Don’t know.” Luke sits down at the table as she sets out two steaming cups of tea – not caf, because Han has taken to hiding it after sundown, and Leia doesn’t feel like tearing the _Falcon_ apart to find it and hasn’t the time to go into town to buy her own stash, which Han will only find and hide anyway, and then they’ll have a row. “I just know it’s Light and it was there and it might be helpful.”

 

He takes it out of the knapsack and hands it to her. It’s a box about the size of her two curled fists, smooth but tactile, strangely patterned, and curiously warm under her hands. It lights up when they touch it; it lights up different colours, like an aurora wreathing Alderaan’s northernmost peaks. She runs her fingers over the patterns, and the light chases them.

 

“It’s pretty,” she says, softly.

 

“We’ll work out how to get it open tomorrow,” Luke says, rubbing his eye sockets with his palms. “Ugh. You know what, Leia?”

 

“What?” Leia says absently.

  
“I really wish Obi-Wan had been a teacher like your dad.”  
  
Leia stares at him. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, your dad taught you to overthrow a government and start again from scratch, but Obi-Wan –”

 

“Didn’t?” Leia sets her tea down. “I thought you still saw – see - him. You could ask?”

 

“I have,” Luke says, looking amazingly sulky for a hero of the galaxy. “He just says I’m a new kind of Jedi and I have to make my own way.”  


Leia’s having some trouble digesting this. “You mean he just… handed you a lightsaber… said, this way is up… and let you go?”

 

Luke opens his mouth, then closes it again, and a very funny look passes across his face. “I was going to say yes, but…”

 

“But what?”

 

“He didn’t tell me which way up the lightsaber went.”

 

Leia snorts, tries to stop it, feels it transmute into a stifled giggle; then Luke is chuckling, and then they’re both laughing, tears in their eyes and mud and glitter on the floor and a holocron on the galley table, and before long Chewie is in there with them yelling about these DAMN KIDS you are ADULTS rebuilding a GALAXY, _ACT LIKE IT_.

  
Leia takes herself off to bed with Han.

 

“You woke the Wookiee,” he groans, eyes still firmly squidged shut. “What’s so important?”  


“Luke found a holocron,” Leia murmurs, tucking herself into the Leia-shaped space he always leaves, whether or not she’s on planet. “Also he gave the Ester kids a fright, and now he’s covered in glitter.”  
  
“Aw man,” Han says sleepily. “Tell me there are pictures.”  


He presses his face into her hair and is back to sleep between one breath and the next.

 

Leia thinks of glitter and holocrons and mud and her brother’s disgruntled humorous face, and hiccups a giggle. Then she turns closer into Han, closes her eyes, and – finally – lets herself fall asleep.

 


End file.
